McBride High’s namesake fought for civil rights

Students and guests celebrate the opening of Long Beach’s newest high school, Ernest McBride High School, Oct. 7, 2013. The event featured McBride students and staff, Long Beach Unified School District Board of Education members, LBUSD Superintendent Christopher J. Steinhauser, Ernest McBride Jr. and Millikan High School Jazz Ensemble
Thomas R. Cordova — Staff photographer

Long Beach public schools are named after an eclectic mix of trailblazers. Some were natives of the area, and some came from far away. But each of the individuals whose names appear on local schools made an impact on Long Beach in some way. Learn more about them with this series of short biographies about the people behind the name.

Ernest McBride

Given that Ernest McBride could not have purchased a home in segregated East Long Beach in the 1940s, he likely never guessed that his name would appear on a high school in the neighborhood one day. But last September, Ernest McBride High School opened its doors in the 7000 block of Parkcrest Street, the city’s first new public high school in 18 years.

Some of Long Beach’s best and brightest students fought for admission into the high school, which offers specialized academic pathways in health, public service and engineering.

McBride fought for civil rights in Long Beach for years. The co-founder of the Long Beach branch of the NAACP, he fought against housing discrimination, racial segregation and for the right of workers to unionize. Born on Nov. 12, 1909, in North Carrolton, Miss., and raised in North Little Rock, Ark., McBride struggled to find work after graduating from high school.

He briefly played baseball for the Negro leagues but found the pay too low to sustain himself. According to the book “The Heritage of African Americans in Long Beach,” McBride decided to leave Arkansas when a recruiter told him about an employment opportunity in San Pedro.

After moving West in 1930, McBride found work at the San Pedro Cotton Compress Company and later at Ralph’s grocery store in 1931. His efforts to unionize Ralph’s workers led to conflicts with management. He later landed work as an electrician’s helper on the naval dry docks of Terminal Island but reportedly faced so much racial discrimination on the job that he wrote to President Franklin Roosevelt about his experiences. During this time, McBride also began organizing for the Congress of Industrial Organizations union, recruiting electricians and integrating the electricians’ union.

McBride’s unionizing efforts weren’t his only form of activism. In 1940, he, wife Lillian (whom he married six years earlier) and their acquaintances founded the Long Beach branch of the NAACP. The Long Beach school district became one of the group’s first targets because it permitted minstrel show performances at schools, according to “The Heritage of African Americans in Long Beach.” In such shows, performers don black face and act out anti-black stereotypes. McBride’s boycott led to the shows being eliminated at local schools.

Advertisement

The boycott against the school district was one of many. McBride also launched boycotts to get local companies to diversify their workforces, leading to the police and fire departments of Long Beach, the local telephone company and a local supermarket chain hiring more blacks.

In addition, McBride fought housing discrimination in Long Beach, as restrictive covenant clauses in the city forbade white homeowners to sell or rent to black families, ensuring that neighborhoods, such as East Long Beach, remained disproportionately white. After the NAACP contacted state officials about restrictive covenant clauses, California lawmakers struck them down.

In 1948, McBride purchased a home at 1461 Lemon Ave. in Long Beach. It became the meeting place of local civil rights activists. In 1994, city officials named the house a historical landmark.